Bank Transfer Day: Nov. 5th, 2011

Guy Fawkes art on Bank Transfer Day

Saturday, Nov. 5, 2011 (Bank Transfer Day on Facebook) is a massive people's effort to stop supporting criminal, welfare-abusing corporate banks.

What can just one person do? One person's social media campaign in California has encouraged hundreds of thousands of consumers to consider moving their money to credit unions to protest outrageous bank fees, fines, and being charged for ATM debit card use. Her Facebook page ("Bank Transfer Day") shows tens of thousands of followers.

• What's the alternative? Find a Credit Union
  
• VIDEO: 1 million Americans moving from big banks
  

Large banks announced in recent weeks they would enact a variety of fees on checking accounts and debit card use blaming their welfare provider, the federal government. The feds put a cap on the money they can charge retailers for processing debit card charges. A federal cap applies only to banks with $10 billion or more in assets.

Such banks -- including Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase & Co., and Wells Fargo & Co. -- have caved in. They are canceling trial runs of debit card fees after consumer backlash. But what can one person do?

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Stories of the Departed (Petavatthu)

Wisdom Quarterly

Ancient round of existences (Sanskrit, samsara) we cycle through endlessly due to ignorance and craving, the Wheel of Rebirth and Death (Hanciong/Flickr).

Stories of the Departed
Spooks, creeps, haints, poltergeists, monsters, ghosts... in Buddhism? The Petavatthu is a collection of ancient Buddhist scriptures in the form of ghost stories. It is located in the Khuddaka Nikaya. Composed of 51 verse narratives, it specifically describes how the effects of unprofitable karma can, when and if they ripen, lead to rebirth in the unhappy realm of "ghosts" (petas).

This happens in accordance within the framework of intentional actions and their results. It gives prominence to the teaching that giving alms to successful Buddhist practitioners (arhats, buddhas, meditators, monastics, moral individuals) is capable of benefiting the ghosts of one's relatives.

But how could my good actions become someone else's good actions? They can not, technically speaking. But since "actions" include words and thoughts, there is a way. If one's relatives in the realm of ghosts approves, lauds, and commends the good one does either on their behalf or in general, they themselves are generating very meritorious mental-karma.

When the deed they are approving of is very excellent, such as giving to an enlightened person, it can have immediate benefits for them. That a relative does it is important, that they approve of it is crucial. The other worlds are not far.

Hungry Ghost (Sanskrit, preta) scroll, Kyoto (Wikimedia commons)

• Famines combine the Realm of Humans and Hungry Ghosts